Week in photos

A Thai vendor takes a nap while waiting for clients at fresh market in Bangkok. Thailand’s central bank upgraded its forecast for the kingdom’s economic growth this year, predicting an expansion of 6.0 percent thanks to a recovery from last year’s massive floods.

AFP/Getty Images

Boaters look at the wreckage of a small plane that crashed in shallow water on Pine Hill Lake near Horton, Mich., about 40 miles south of Lansing. rescuers helped get two people away from the wreckage following the Sunday night accident.

AP

Shoes of missing people form the number forty-nine, in memory of the mutilated victims dumped by hitmen in Cadereyta, at the Macroplaza in Monterrey. Suspected drug gang killers dumped 49 headless bodies on a highway near Mexico’s northern city of Monterrey in one of the country’s worst atrocities in recent years.

REUTERS

Christian Democratic Union party leader and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a news conference in Berlin. Merkel’s conservatives suffered a crushing defeat on Sunday in an election in Germany’s most populous state, a result which could embolden the left opposition to step up its criticism of her European austerity policies.

REUTERS

A Chinese fwoman rides past old fishing boats on her motorcycle in Qingdao city, Shandong province, China. Reports state that excessive fishing, ocean pollution and the high price of diesel have caused a sharp decline in fishery resources, nearly paralyzing the industry in East China.

EPA

Madame Tussauds artists give the final touches to the new wax figure of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. The statue, unveiled on May 14, honors the Diamond Jubilee of the monarch replicating the official Jubilee portrait. It is the 23rd wax figure of the Queen created by the museum.

EPA

A gardener waters the lawn near a couple getting their wedding photos taken at a park in Beijing, China.

AP Photo

A car sits upside down after falling from a parking lot at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, killing one of the three people in the vehicle.

AFP/Getty Images

US space shuttle Enterprise, mounted on transport vehicle, is backed into a temporary hanger from the NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft at JFK International Airport in New York. The shittle will be moved to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in June.

AFP/Getty Images

Parishoners attend French-language Mass at the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in New York. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese plans to close the parish , founded in 1841, that has been a house of worship to many of the French-speaking citizens of New York.

AFP/Getty Images

Racing team crews try to extinguish a fire in the Williams racing pit stand at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo on the outskirts of Barcelona after the Spanish Formula One Grand Prix.

AFP/Getty Images

Members of Mayan communities and non-governmental organizations make a human chain in front of a pyramid at the archaeological site of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, to protest against genetically modified organisms.

AFP/Getty Images

Chandra Bahadur Dangi, the 72-year-old Nepali crowned the “world’s shortest man” by Guinness World Records, walks along a wall to attend a press conference at Circular Quay on Sydney Harbor.

AFP/Getty Images

Supporters of Santos cheer for their team before the start of the final of the Paulista Championship — the main football tournament of the state of Sao Paulo — at Morumbi stadium in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

AFP/Getty Images

The Japanese fishing trawler, Eihatsu Maru, lies stranded after it ran aground off the exclusive Clifton beach in Cape Town, South Africa.

EPA

This 18-year-old Afghan traveled over 20 hours in the engine compartment of a car to sneak into Bari, Italy. Reports state that the car arrived in the port of Bari on the ferry “Superfast1.” Two Bulgarians were arrested for aiding and abetting illegal immigration.

EPA

People gather at the Marina beach to enjoy the summer holidays and to get some respite from the heat in Chennai, India.

EPA

Japanese shoppers are reflected in the multi-surfaced kaleidoscope-like mirrored entrance to the recently opened ‘Tokyo Plaza Omotesando Harajuku’ shopping complex, in the fashionable Harajuku district in Tokyo, Japan.

Getty Images

Shaven-headed young boy Hye Gak wears a bear’s ears headband at the Everland amusement park in Yongin, South Korea. Hye Gak is among the nine children who entered a temple to have an experience of monk’s life to celebrate upcoming birthday of Buddha in three-week Little Buddha Camp.

AP Photo

A Sunni gunman fires during clashes in the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon. Street battles pitting Lebanese Sunnis who support the Syrian uprising against Alawite backers of Assad’s regime killed at least one person Monday, raising the death toll to four since Sunday.

AP Photo

Outgoing French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy leave the Elysee Palace after the handover ceremony while new President Francois Hollande, and his companion Valerie Trierweiler look on in Paris.

AP

Visitors sit in the new Flying Ninjago of the Legoland theme park in Guenzburg, Germany.

EPA

This man set himself on fire outside the Oslo courthouse where the trial against alleged massacre madman Anders Behring Breivik is taking place. The man was overpowered by security and police personnel as he ran towards the entrance to the courthouse.

EPA

A foggy morning gives an eerie pall to the Chinese city of Qingdao, in Shandong Province.

ZUMAPRESS.com

A Lebanese boy looks through a hole made by shrapnel that hit his house, during fighting in the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon.

Local radio personalities Fitzy (right) and Wippa lift Chandra Bahadur Dangi, the world shortest person, as water rushes in on Bondi Beach in Sydney. Dangi, a 72-year-old Nepalese man who is 21.5 inches tall, touched the ocean and sand for the first time in his life.

AP

A worker fumigates the field before the start of an Indian Premier League cricket match between Delhi Daredevils and Kings XI Punjab in New Delhi.

AP

Masked Palestinians hurl stones at Israeli troops during clashes outside the Ofer military prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin listens during a meeting with Premier Dmitry Medvedev to discuss forming a new cabinet in Moscow.

AP

A Thai worker rests inside a piece of a water pipeline in Bangkok.

AP

A tourist takes an early morning walk along the shore of Cabo San Lucas in Baja California, Mexico.

AFP/Getty Images

A masked Palestinian protester pours gasoline on burning tires during clashes at the Qalandia crossing in the occupied West Bank, part of protests marking Nakba day, which commemorates the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after the establishment of the Israel state in 1948.

AFP/Getty Images

An unidentified man is manhandled by riot police during an eviction at Puerta del Sol square, where a few demonstrators have remained for a third straight night to mark the anniversary of the “indignados” movement in Madrid, Spain.

AP

Police officers inspect the remains of vehicles after an explosion ripped through a crowded area of Bogota, Colombia, injuring at least 10 people. Witnesses said the blast appeared to have been from a bomb placed on a public bus, but officials could not immediately confirm the cause.

AFP/Getty Images

Yawalapiti children play over the Xingu River in the Xingu National Park, Brazil.

Reuters

A street artist appears to float while asking for money in a Madrid Street.

AP

A pirate skiff is set on fire after HMS Westminster’s Merlin 502 fired on it in the Indian Ocean. European Union naval forces in attack helicopters conducted their first onshore raid Tuesday on a suspected pirate lair in Somalia.

AP

Britain’s Princess Anne is surrounded by security officers as she walks atop Athens’ Acropolis to attend an Olympic Flame ceremony. The Olympic flame will be handed over to the London 2012 delegation on Thursday.

AP

A worker takes a break at his workshop in Shanghai. A slew of bleak data has raised fears China’s economy is cooling faster than previously thought, but analysts say Beijing has only limited means to prevent a politically-damaging slowdown.

AFP/Getty Images

A passenger bus burns after it was set on fire in Dhaka. Three vehicles, including the bus, were torched in the city after a court sent 33 senior opposition leaders and activists of a Bangladesh Nationalist Party to jail for their alleged involvement in violence during general strikes last month.

Reuters

Bangladeshi firefighters control a blaze at a slum in Dhaka. Over a thousand homes burnt down as a devastating blaze raged through the slum.

AFP/Getty Images

Police officers carry away a protester as they close down the Occupy Camp in front of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt in western Germany.

Women try to salvage their belongings after a fire in a slum at Shyamoli in Dhaka, Bangladesh. At least 10 people were injured, including a firefighter.

Reuters

Smoke rises from an illegal oil refinery along the Diebu creek in Nigeria’s Bayelsa state. Nigeria is Africa’s largest crude oil exporter but its production capacity has been slashed by thieves drilling into pipelines passing through winding creeks and waterways in the vast delta.

Reuters

Children play catch in the water on Mele Beach in Port Vila, Vanuatu, during an ICC Cricket Development Program Clinic.

Getty Images

A group of ‘catadores,’ or scavengers dig through trash at the Jardim Gramacho landfill, the biggest in South America. The landfill is set to close next June 1st.

AFP/Getty Images

A young athlete from the provincial diving team rests on sponges during a training session at a training center in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China.

Reuters

This photo taken by the European Southern Observatory shows the galaxy Centaurus A in stunning detail. With a total exposure time of more than 50 hours, this is probably the deepest view of the elliptical galaxy, located about 12 million light-years away from Earth.

AFP/Getty Images

The Hewlett Gulch Fire continues to burn in the Poudre Canyon near Fort Collins, Colo, which the US Forest Service said was caused by humans. About 200 firefighters are now fighting the blaze, which is only about 5 percent contained.

AP

T-shirts showing an image of a revolutionary-styled President Obama at a stall in Beijing. A slew of bleak economic data has raised fears China’s economy is cooling faster than previously thought.

AFP/Getty Images

A sculpture cast from the body of British artist Antony Gormley can be seen atop a building in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil. The public exhibition titled “Event Horizon” uses 31 rooftops as a part of the project.

Riot police arrest a student during a march in Santiago by protestors demanding that President Sebastian Pinera’s government overhaul the education system to guarantee free, quality public education for all Chileans.

AFP/Getty Images

A village boy leads his goat past a parched pond on the outskirts of the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar. Huge swathes of rural farmland has turned dry as farmers await the annual monsoon rains.

AP Photo

A model showcases hair sculptures created by hairstylists at the Audi Fashion Festival Show of Redken in Singapore.

AP Photo

People look on after the gantry of the Baltic Container Terminal fell down onto shipping containers at the waterfront in Gdynia, Poland.

AFP/Getty Images

Nik Wallenda performs a walk on a tightrope in the rain during training for his walk over Niagara Falls.

AP Photo

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip drive into the Salthouse Dock on a converted amphibious landing craft now used for sightseeing tours in Liverpool.

REUTERS

Mejra Dzogaz prays near the graves of her two sons before the television broadcast of the court proceedings of former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic’s in Potocari, near Srebrenica.

REUTERS

A young boy jumps into the water as he cools off while scavenging for valuables in the holy Yamuna River, on a warm day in New Delhi, India.

AP Photo

People sunbathe on the beach during the 65th Cannes film festival in France.

AFP/Getty Images

A man takes nap on one of oil tankers used to transport NATO fuel supplies to neighboring Afghanistan, in Karachi, Pakistan.

AP Photo

An Indian man gets his retina scanned as he enrolls for Aadhar, India’s unique identification project in Kolkata. The giant ID project, which aims to give everyone an identity record and number for the first time, involves recording retina scans, fingerprints and photographs of all 1.2 billion Indians.

Iron-cast life-size sculptures by British artist Antony Gormley hang from the ceiling of Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil.

AFP/Getty Images

Elodie Clouvel of France attends a training session as she practices for the modern pentathlon competition at the training headquarters of INSEP (National Institute for Sport and Physical Education) in Vincennes, near Paris.

REUTERS

Facebook founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, (center, rings the opening bell of the Nasdaq stock market Friday from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. The social media company priced its IPO on Thursday at $38 per share, with investors able to buy shares Friday.

AP Photo

The Amorphophallus titanum plant, also known as the “corpse flower,” at the Honolulu Botanical Gardens is expected to bloom soon — a spectacle that only occurs every three to five years. The donated plant is believed to be the only one on Oahu. The plant’s allure is the foul odor it emits, similar to rotting flesh, which is so pungent one horticulturist at the Garden says it makes his eyes water.

AP Photo

A man tries to regain control of his tractor as the front wheels lift off the ground while driving a trolley loaded with sand on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan.

REUTERS

President Barack Obama holds a bilateral meeting with new French President Francois Hollande in advance of the G-8 and NATO Summits in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.

ABACAUSA.COM

The temple of Parthenon is silhouetted against a cloudy sunset atop the Acropolis hill in Athens, Greece. The Fitch ratings agency downgraded debt-crippled Greece deeper into junk territory on Thursday, warning of a “probable” Greek exit from the euro currency union if new national elections next month produce an anti-bailout government.

AP Photo

French bullfighter Sebastian Castella is gored during a bullfight of the San Isidro’s fair at the Las Ventas Bullring in Madrid. Castella continued with the bullfight, bleeding from his injured groin.

AP Photo

A participant of the Life Ball poses for photographers upon her arrival ahead of the event at Vienna’s international airport. The Life Ball is Europe’s largest annual AIDS charity event and takes place in Vienna’s city hall May 19.

REUTERS

Hong Kong actor Chow Yun Fat walks down the catwalk during the Hugo Boss Black Fashion Show held in Beijing, China.

AP Photo

Alaska Airlines Capt. Trent Davey carries a 55-pound Copper River King Salmon as the annual first air shipment of the fish arrives in Seattle. Copper River salmon are prized for their high oil content and flavor, and typically bring the highest prices at restaurants and fish markets.

AP Photo

Author David McCullough, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for books “Truman” and “John Adams,” gestures as he walks over the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. McCullough is celebrating the 40th anniversary of his book “The Great Bridge,” which has just been reissued with a new introduction by the 78-year-old writer.

AP Photo

Lebanese students perform during “The Big Dance” event in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, near the parliament. The event is an initiative of the British Council’s global project ,”Connecting Classrooms,” which aims to develop links between schools in the UK and Lebanon.

REUTERS

Professional divers wearing gowns swim during a Flores De Mayo (Flowers of May) festival at Ocean Park in Manila, in the Philippines.

REUTERS

An employee walks on solar panels at a power plant in Aksu, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The United States hit Chinese solar companies with punitive import tariffs of 30 percent or more on Thursday, ruling they had dumped cut-price solar panels on the U.S. market.

REUTERS

Multihulls competes during the America’s Cup World Series regatta in the Venice lagoon, Italy.

REUTERS

Palestinians throw rocks at an Israeli army bulldozer during clashes in the northern West Bank village of Kufr Qaddum, near the Jewish settlement of Kdumim.